


however long the earth can take us

by JennaCupcakes



Series: The Terror, but with Zombies [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, Rated M for Many Zombies, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23511751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: Nothing stays buried on King William Island.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Series: The Terror, but with Zombies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691767
Comments: 25
Kudos: 34





	however long the earth can take us

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever have a horrible idea that you absolutely need to share with someone? Yeah, me too. Büchner told me: _"Geht einmal euren Phrasen nach bis zu dem Punkt, an dem sie verkörpert werden."_ , which is German for 'what horrible implications have you left out of the first Zombie installment?'
> 
> So here's my 'I chose not to use Archive Warnings'-Warning: There are zombies. They are characters we know and love. Sometimes I will describe these zombies. But not in super-gorey detail. Still, you have been warned. Rated M for Many Zombies, not for sexytimes. 
> 
> Title taken from Volker Braun's poem _Nach dem Massaker der Illusionen_. The translation was done by the [Poetry International Archives](https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poem/2403/auto/0/0/Volker-Braun/Following-the-Massacre-of-the-Illusions/en/tile).
> 
> **FOLLOWING THE MASSACRE OF THE ILLUSIONS**
> 
> Guevara under the march route with severed  
> Hands, „no more burrowing for him,“  
> When ideas are buried  
> The bones emerge  
> A state funeral FOR FEAR OF RESURRECTION  
> The head marked with blood and wounds a design concept  
> FOR ONCE FOLLOW UP YOUR PHRASES  
> TO THE POINT WHERE THEY BECOME FLESH AND BLOOD  
> Valeri Chodemtchuk, interred  
> In the sarcophagus of the reactor to abide  
> However long the earth can take us  
> And what we will call freedom  
> \- _Volker Braun_

The laces closing Francis’s tent are tightly drawn. Not even the wind can find much pull, the fabric is so taut. It’s important to leave no openings. They learned that the hard way.

Stone shifts outside the tent, the sound low but grating, like marbles clacking against each other in a schoolyard game but with more violence. It’s not the wind – they learned that the hard, way, too. Stone shifts, again, and Francis finds himself holding his breath, even though he knows he is safe in his tent. At least from the hunger of those waiting outside. But Francis does not expect the rasping voice, nor the recognition that hits him, nor to be able to make out _words_.

“Francis…”

Francis presses his knuckles to his mouth. No. They weighed him down with stones, reunited him with the earth. They buried him. He shouldn’t be here. _Not James_.

“ _Francis_ …”

Oh, he is imagining it, he knows, but he thinks he can hear longing in James’s voice. These creatures have no life, no personality, nothing that could lead a God-fearing man to believe there is still a soul within that body, and yet Francis – who has gone on too long, perhaps, and is too tired – can hear the ache in James’s voice so clearly. It burns his heart up, renders it ash when he thought he lost the capacity for feeling long ago.

“James, please, go to sleep.”

If he can pretend it’s just James in the sleeping bag next to him, delirious from pain but _alive_ , then perhaps he can preserve some of his sanity even as his heart is torn asunder. Francis closes his eyes firmly; tries to block out the shifting of the shale, the lack of breathing, the scrabbling of hands on the tarp. He pictures James, with pink cheeks and a sly smile on his lips, breathing quietly, but the image slips from his grasp and James’s hair falls out, his face pales, his breathing stops. Again and again.

“Francis.”

Breathe. He has to breathe. In through his mouth, down the windpipe that wants to close up around it, into his lungs; then out the same way until it becomes fog in front of his mouth. He thinks of James’s hot breath on his neck, his weight in Francis’s lap when he had still been firm and substantial, how he’d clung to Francis and Francis to him. Had he only known he’d end up on this floor, with this being that is no longer James outside his tent, would he have held on tighter? Could he have held on tighter?

He turns away from the voice; feels the tears cold on his cheeks.

Francis falls asleep to the sound of James calling for him.

* * *

He’s not there when Francis wakes up.

Francis walks an inconspicuous perimeter, far out as he dares, but there is no sign of James, and tracks are impossible to read on the shale. If Blanky was still here, Francis would confide in him. He would trust Blanky not to declare him insane – the light is near permanent now, and the creatures they’ve known cannot move under sunlight, and besides, they _buried_ James – but Blanky has not returned. He has become more proof that the Arctic doesn’t give; it only takes from Francis. At least it’s unlikely that Blanky will come to haunt him.

But James does.

He pulls Francis from the first gentle caresses of sleep, this time. Francis’s thoughts have just begun to spin pleasantly out of his control – images of the tent around him mixing with images of his cabin on Terror, his childhood home, his lodgings back in England – when he hears the rasping and sits up with a start.

“Francis…”

The voice is so clearly James’s, the word he speaks so clearly Francis’s name. The despair with which it is said takes Francis’s breath away. James had to lean on Francis in his last days, yes, but he didn’t have to beg Francis for anything. Francis couldn’t have denied him. Now, dragging his decaying body across King William Island, resurrected by a power Francis cannot understand, he is imploring Francis once more for deliverance, and Francis doesn’t know how to give it to him.

“Just close your eyes, James. Let go. You can let go now.”

He wants peace for James Fitzjames. He wants it so much he is almost tempted to undo the laces of his tent; except he wouldn’t know what to do after that. They buried him. James rose, anyway. That was the only remedy they knew.

“ _Francis_.”

Francis weeps again. He weeps like he hasn’t since childhood, shaken by the effort of stifling his sobs. Outside, James’s hollow voice begs. Come morning, there’s no sign of him.

* * *

Under the unrelenting Arctic sun, he cares for Jopson, and he reassures Little. He sits with the men that are with him, the ones whose lives are still in his hand. He eats the food and tries not to think of how it poisons him; he walks under the sun and tries not to think of how it burns his skin. He is aware of how he is failing at these efforts.

South.

It’s their only prayer now.

South.

* * *

“I should have told you I loved you. I don’t know when, but I should have, at some point.”

The relative darkness of his tent is much like the confessional, if he directs what little imagination he has to it. Like the confessional, it is gloomy but there is light filtering through in odd shapes. Like the confessional, he cannot look his confessor in the eye. He doesn’t remember what incense smells like, but the headache that came with the smell he can picture with ease. It’s been years since he’s last confessed. Still, it is a habit, and so he lets the words flow. In the confessional, one is beyond pride.

“I suppose I did tell you, the way I knew how. But some words must still be said.”

“Francis.”

Francis is beginning to think he can discern different meanings in the ways James says his name. It’s been a week. He doesn’t sleep much anymore.

* * *

One night, his hand finds a careful, fumbling path out from under the tarp and the safety of the tent. James’s voice has been desperate, insistent, and Francis can’t take much more of it without sacrificing more of his sanity than he’s willing to part with.

A part of his mind that hasn’t yet been eaten up by the lack of sleep and the riptide of James’s despair wonders what he’s hoping to achieve. This thing that is no longer James will eat him. It will take one bite out of his hand and have it gone. But the other part of his mind – the one that has been living with this uncertainty for far too long – thinks anything would be better than suffering James’s misery for much longer.

Cold air brushes his fingers. He unfurls them slowly, leaves it slightly cupped as though ready to receive communion. After a couple of minutes, his fingers are numb with cold.

Nothing touches them.

But James still begs.

Francis is suddenly afraid that if he stepped outside the tent now, he’d find no one there at all.

* * *

“Francis.”

The stone digs into Francis’s side. He barely even notices it for the ache in his bones. His hand, where the iron digs into his wrist, is numb. Around him, the air is cold and stale with rot, the iron smell of blood heavy in the air. So much blood, from his men, and the creature, and probably Francis himself. There is a voice next to his ear.

“Francis…”

He has come to end it. At least Francis will finally know peace. He’ll have abandoned Little and the rest of his men, but there are worse ways to go. It will be an odd quid pro quo – he helped James out of his misery and now James will help him out of his. He closes his eyes, and listens for the shifting of rocks, inching closer and closer towards him.

“ _Francis_.”

He feels an arm around him, then. He presses his eyes together more tightly, readies himself for the feeling of teeth sinking into his shoulder, but nothing of the sort happens. There is only the arm, and something like a body pressed against his back, except it is not warm, not alive but for the voice, insisting quietly – “Francis. Francis. _Francis_.”

Francis feels like his chest is being pried open and his heart dragged out over the stones. He feels every painful pulse of it, strong despite what he was put through, and knows suddenly that this will not be his end.

It will just be another very painful thing he’ll have to live through.

* * *

“Do you know something of people returning from the dead?”

He’s learned to phrase questions that can be answered with a nod or a shake of the head – or, in the case of the Lady Silence, with a scowl or a slightly milder scowl. Sometimes he speaks just to hear his own voice, in English because it brings him comfort. He recites poems, soliloquies, retells passages from his favourite novels as far as he can recall them, and wonders if the Lady picked up enough English from Goodsir to understand some of it. She doesn’t look displeased, just leaves him to it.

The expression on the Lady’s face at that particular question is a harder one to puzzle out. She cocks her head slightly, as though listening for a faint sound. Francis – who is painfully aware of the shortcomings of his Inuktitut – rephrases the question.

“Have you ever put someone in the ground, and they… stood up again?”

The Lady shakes her head. For lack of a conversation partner, Francis becomes both prosecutor and devil’s advocate. He can talk for hours like this, only moved by the gentle prompts of the Lady’s expressions. He switches to English for his speculations. He never spoke this much when he was still surrounded by his men. Now he speaks enough for a whole crew of them, and still feels terribly lonely.

“Perhaps it is a sign that we are no longer in the realm of our God.”

The Lady Silence has returned to her neutral face, the one that Francis found haughty upon a time. Now, it is as familiar to him as the face of each of his crew members.

“We fight each other over religion,” he notes as an aside for the Lady, then shakes his head. “And then we come here, to you, and tell you and your people what is right, and what is good, and what is civilized. Well, I tell you now – I think our God, in whose name we commit our atrocities, has no dominion here.”

No bolt of fire comes from the Heavens to strike him dead. Francis continues.

“This Passage is not meant to be ours. It is yours, and your people’s. And those of us who died here have paid the price for our arrogance, by dying so far away from our home that not even our souls can find their way back to the God we worship.”

He feels something like comfort in this line of thought. He grasps at it, and switches back to Inuktitut.

“Tuunbaq… he guards the Passage, doesn’t he?”

There is a painful set to the Lady’s mouth. She nods.

Francis sighs, and looks out to the bleak landscape – endless sun, pale rocks, a coast that looks like someone took a bite out of it. He is a guest in this land. An uninvited guest. He took liberties he shouldn’t have, and now something that was whole in this land is forever broken. No one left to guard the Passage.

“I’m sorry,” Francis says.

He knows what he would say, were he in the Lady’s place.

_Don’t be sorry. Make it right._

* * *

Little is dead by the time they get to him. He must have been dead for some days, but he stirs when Francis sinks down next to him. Francis has lost all fear, along with his hand – the one he offered up to James, the one James didn’t take. The one that has been taken from him, anyway.

Francis is no longer disturbed by the word-like sounds that come out of the mouths of his dead men. He cried when Jopson begged him – “ _Don’t go, don’t go_ ,” over and over– and he had to go anyway, with no way to bury his steward that would give him rest. Finally, it seems, his heart is dry, the tears all spent.

He puts Little’s head on his shoulder and sits for a long while, while Lady Silence watches them with interest. She, too, knew these men. Not as well as Francis did, but she knew them. They were her captors. Some were kind to her and were still her captors. And now all of them are gone, save Francis.

* * *

Winter has come, and Silna has left them. Francis stays behind. He measures progress in his recovery, finds himself reaching for things with his missing hand less and less. He regains some strength. Autumn passes, and winter returns, less bleak than Francis feared it would be. It’s in these winter months, the darkness ubiquitous, the nights around a shared fire all the more wanted for it, that James comes to him again.

“Francis.”

The voice is clearer than ever before. He sounds almost like he did in life – demanding, but with the respect they have learnt for each other underneath. Soft, and deep – like his smile, like his eyes. Francis still misses him terribly.

“You’re not really here, are you?” He asks the darkness. English feels strange on his tongue now, unfamiliar to his muscles. It was never his mother tongue, and yet it feels like a loss.

“ _Francis_.”

This time, the word is spoken more softly, like one might whisper a lover’s name after a shared night of passion. Nobody calls him Francis here. When he hears James say it, his name feels like a secret, as though James is trying to call forth his soul.

“Tuunbaq is gone. There’s no one guarding the passage anymore. You are free, James.”

The lack of a response is worse than the insistent calling of his name. Francis tries to conjure up an image of James as he was in life – tall and healthy, a bright smile and dark eyes. The way they kissed each other, like there were no rules to be heeded. James always the first over any wall. Here now only in the way Francis’s memory can invoke him.

“I will protect them instead. I will make sure that no one comes after us.”

He will try, at least. There’s not much that can stay the hunger of English ambition once it has set its eyes on something. But Francis has seen things out here that make him believe that it’s worth trying – for Silna, whose life he ruined, and for the men who will not find rest out here.

He pictures James again – not outside the tent, skin peeling away from flesh, hair falling out, eyes rotting in their sockets – but inside, in a sleeping bag next to Francis, healthier than he’s ever been when they did share a tent on their long march. James is smiling at Francis indulgently, and reaches out a hand to stroke Francis’s cheek.

“Francis.”

The word sounds fondly in his mouth. Francis smiles back, leans into the touch, and closes his eyes. He feels warm, despite the winter, despite everything. After that, he doesn’t dream of James anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr at [veganthranduil](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/). Do leave me a comment if you enjoyed this (though I feel like 'enjoy' might be the wrong word to use here).


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